Zach Smith of Pinback
Few franchises would appear rail harder against the values of early Punk than Star Trek, and not just ’cause Spock gave the mohawk dude a Vulcan neck pinch in Star Trek 4 (the one where they save the whales in 1980s San Francisco). There’s a basic disconnect all along the line: Order (military life in a Federation Starship) vs. Disorder (tour life in a crappy van); Aliens (hot chicks with green skin) vs. Groupies (hot chicks with green hair); Spock’s high-class harp vs. a decal-emblazoned Fender Squier electric; and so forth.
At the end of the day though, you like what you like and cretinous scenemakers be damned—which (conjecturing here) may be why Zach Smith, bassist for Touch & Go label stalwarts Pinback, loves Star Trek, so much so that he once even made a fan film, as revealed in an article, “Let Your Geek Flags Fly,” that ran in the San Diego CityBeat paper last week.
For Zach Smith, bassist of the local band Pinback, Star Trek is a pastime enjoyed mostly at home. Smith says he started watching when he was 4 years old. He’d hang out with some older neighborhood boys who loved the show, and the interest just stuck.
“There’s no better sleep remedy than the hum of a smoothly calibrated warp-drive engine,” Smith jokes.
Actually, his wife Rachel Ehlin says, his comment is spot-on. She falls asleep to Star Trek Voyager (the mid-’90s series) every night, even when she joins Smith on the band’s tour bus—but not because the show is boring, mind you.
“It’s like a lullaby, or like being read to at night,” she explains.Ehlin was a late convert. She recalls with a giggle that her dad used to punish her with episodes of Star Trek: Next Generation. She learned to appreciate the show while dating her future husband. Now, she boasts, she’s a bigger fan than he is.
“I don’t know why you’re asking Zach about this,” Ehlin says mischievously. “I know way more than he does.”
That may be true, but Ehlin didn’t star in a homemade Star Trek fan film like her husband did some 15 years ago. Smith played a Klingon, while longtime friends (and Three Mile Pilot bandmates) Pall Jenkins and Tom Zinser played Spock and Scotty, respectively. (Will somebody please post this on YouTube?)
“Pall put Silly Putty on his ears,” says their friend Michael Zimmerman, who donned black pants and a yellow shirt to portray Captain Kirk. “We all liked the show, and when they called me, I wanted to do it. They had video equipment and cool sound effects from the original series.”
Zimmerman was in kindergarten when he started watching with his older brother. “He was way into it,” he recalls. “My mom made us Star Trek costumes.”
“Will somebody please post this on YouTube?” Agreed—this I wanna see.
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